BYU Jerusalem Center

I made it! I am in the Holy Land and it is so beautiful. It has been wonderful. I have learned so much already and yet I have only learned a small portion of what I can learn. I get more excited everyday about all the things we get to do. The moment I stepped into the Jerusalem Center I felt like I was back in the Sao Paulo MTC. It has that same feeling. The food was good and we met our religion teacher for a half an hour, then one of our history teachers. We then got a tour of the building. It kind of reminds me of the Tanner building on BYU campus. It continually goes down the hill with stairs and on each level you split off into hallways. There is a nice gym, movie theaters, classrooms, auditorium (where we also have church), cafeteria, library, really nice apartments for four people, and more. There are big windows everywhere that looks out into the old city. It is beautiful. I can't wait to go out on my balcony tomorrow morning to see the whole view. I get more and more excited by the minute. This will be a great experience. Mom there is also this awesome organ in the auditorium. We started our meeting by singing a hymn and it was beautiful. Well today (Saturday) is our Sabbath day. It doesn't feel too weird because all my days are mixed up anyways. Church was really neat though because we are in a big auditorium with the rest of the Jerusalem Branch here (of course really small) and we get to look out at the old city. The Jerusalem center sits on the Mount of Olives. We had choir practice this morning and over half of the students here came to sing in it. We sang a number for prelude and it was pretty. After church we went and walked to the Garden of Gethsemane. It is not what I expected. There were so many tourists and we all walked around this little block of grove with olive trees. It was neat but more of a tourist site. I want to find a spot on the mount of olives where I can sit and read. I will search next week. Yesterday we had class for four hours but I really like the classes. I was scared that I wouldn't like the history classes but since I am here in the city it helps me have more interest on learning about the details on why they suspect where things have happened. We then got into our committee meetings. I was put as the chair coordinator for the out of Jerusalem activities. We got together and looked at the activities that semesters have done in the past. It looks like we get to plan to trips in Galilee (like river rafting, snorkeling, and visiting caves). It should be fun. We could not leave the center until 3:00 because it was the Muslims Sabbath day, but once 3:00 hit we were out exploring. We meet a really nice man on the street who spoke English. He invited us over for tea and I think we will go tomorrow. It is so weird being in a country where I do not understand the language or read the signs. I feel like I should speak Portuguese but it doesn't work. Well then we did a little homework and played sports all night long. I got a HUGE group together to do the P90X yoga. It was a blast, they had so much fun with it. I think it will become a routine. Oh I didn't tell you about our tour of the city! For four hours we walked around East, West Jerusalem and the old city. Wow it is so packed, people are everywhere. The old city was amazing, I felt like I was going through the flavalas in Brazil. The roads are so small with stores on every side of you. We were in groups and our teacher should us some of the sites as we walked around. There are marks all around the old city where they think are spots were Christ first fell with the cross, and so on. We went into the Holy Sepulcher. That is an amazing place. Wow those people believe that that is the same place where not only Christ was on the cross but also where blood dripped down onto Adam's bones buried underneath the ground, where he was resurrected, and where he stood to create the earth. That is a very important building for these people. Of course we speculate that some of these things happened in other areas but it was neat to see. Anyways I could go on and on about what we saw. It was so fast, that I am excited to go back to these places and spend more time there. Well I bet that is all you want to hear for now.